(1743 - 1826)

THOMAS JEFFERSON, author of the
Declaration of Independence, was born on April 13, 1743 and grew up on the
family plantation at Shadwell in Albermarle County, Virginia. His father was
Peter Jefferson, who, with the aid of thirty slaves, tilled a tobacco and wheat
farm of 1,900 acres and like his fathers before him, was a justice of the peace,
a vestryman of his parish and a member of the colonial legislature. The first of
the Virginia Jefferson’s of Welsh extraction, Peter in 1738 married Jane
Randolph. Of their ten children, Thomas was the third. Thomas inherited a full
measure of his father’s bodily strength and stature, both having been esteemed
in their prime as the strongest men of their county. He also inherited his
father’s inclination to liberal politics, his taste for literature and his
aptitude for mathematics. The Jefferson’s were a musical family; the girls
sang the songs of the time, and Thomas, practicing the violin assiduously from
boyhood, became an excellent performer.

In 1757, when Thomas was only fourteen, his father died, leaving him heir
to an enormous estate. On his deathbed, his father left an order that his
son’s education, already well advanced in a preparatory school, should be
completed at the College of William and Mary, a circumstance which Thomas always
remembered with gratitude, saying that if he had to choose between the education
and the estate his father left him, he would choose the education.

At seventeen, when young Jefferson entered the College of William and Mary
he was tall, raw-boned, freckled, and sandy haired, with large feet and hands,
thick wrists, and prominent cheekbones and chin. His classmates described him as
far from handsome, a fresh, healthy looking youth, very erect, agile and strong,
with something of rusticity in his air and demeanor. The college at that time
had one truly outstanding educator, Dr. William Small of Scotland, professor of
mathematics. Jefferson said in his autobiography that his coming under the
influence of Dr. Small “probably fixed the destinies of my life”. Dr.
Small gave Jefferson the views of the connection of the sciences and of the
system of things of which man is a part, which then prevailed in the advanced
scientific circles of Europe. As a student, Jefferson attended the musical
parties that the lieutenant governor, Francis Fauquier hosted. Jefferson was
always present with his violin and participated in the concert, the governor
himself also was a performer. From Fauquier, a man of the world of the period,
Jefferson learned much of the social, political, and parliamentary life of the
Old World. George Wythe, who was then a young
lawyer of Williamsburg, often frequented the governor’s table, and contributed
immensely to the forming of Jefferson’s mind.

Upon his graduation in 1762, Jefferson took up the study of law, under the
guidance of George Wythe. While he was a student, he was an eyewitness of those
memorable scenes in the Virginia legislature, which followed the passage of the
stamp act. He was present as a spectator in the house when Patrick Henry read
his five resolutions, enunciating the principal that Englishmen living in
America had all the rights of Englishmen living in England, the chief of which
was that they could only be taxed by their own representatives. On coming of age
in April 1764, Jefferson assumed the management of his father’s estate and was
appointed to two of his father’s offices—justice of the peace and vestryman.
He gave much attention to the cultivation of his lands, and remained always an
attentive, zealous and improving farmer. Early in 1767, Jefferson was admitted
to the bar of Virginia, and entered at once the practice of his profession.
Jefferson was an accurate, painstaking and laborious lawyer and his business
blossomed. He practiced law for nearly eight years, until the Revolutionary
contest summoned him to other labors.

His public life began on May 11, 1769, when Jefferson took his seat as a
member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, George
Washington also being a member. Jefferson was then twenty-six years old. On
becoming a public man he made a resolution “never to engage, while in
public office, in any kind of enterprise for the improvement of my fortune, nor
to wear any other character than that of a farmer.” On the close of his
public career of nearly half a century, he could say that he had kept this
resolution.

Martha Jefferson
Click Scan to Enlarge

On January 1, 1772 Jefferson married Martha
Wayles Skelton, who was the daughter of John Wayles, a wealthy Williamsburg
lawyer, from whom she inherited a large property. Her first husband, Bathurst
Skelton died before she was twenty years of age, and Jefferson was one of her
many suitors. A few days after their marriage, he took her to live in his partly
constructed mountaintop home, Monticello. The next year, the death of Martha’s
father brought them a great increase of fortune – doubling Jefferson’s
estate.

In March 1775, Jefferson was in Richmond as a member of the convention,
which assembled in the church of St. John to consider what course Virginia
should take in the crisis. The last act of this convention was to appoint a
replacement in the case of a vacancy in the delegation of Virginia to congress.
That replacement was Thomas Jefferson and on June 21, 1775, Jefferson took his
seat as a substitute for Peyton Randolph, who
had been called home.

Jefferson was an earnest, diligent, and useful member of the congress. His
readiness in composition, his profound knowledge of British law and his innate
love of freedom and justice, gave him solid standing in the body. In May 1776,
the news reached congress that the Virginia convention had unanimously voted for
independence.

The momentous decision of the Continental
Congress to sever its ties to Great Britain came on July 2, 1776 when the
Delegates of the United Colonies of America adopted the resolution, introduced
by Richard
Henry Lee and John
Adams, declaring independence from Great Britain:

``Resolved,
That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent
states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and
that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is,
and ought to be, totally dissolved.'' .

On
July 2, 1776 the United Colonies of America officially became the United States
of America. It was July 2, 1776 that John Adams thought would be
celebrated by future generations of Americans.

"The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most
memorable Epocha, in the History of America. . . . It ought to be solemnized
with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and
Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward
forever more." -- John
Adamsto Abigail
Adams, July 3, 1776

There
were many revisions made by Jefferson, the committee of five, and then by
Congress itself before the final vote on July 4, 1776. One edit Jefferson
didn't want was the removal of a long paragraph that ascribed liability of the
slave trade to British King
George III. Despite this and other key edits and changes Jefferson is
rightfully considered the author of the Declaration of Independence.

The document was debated in congress on July 2, 3 and 4. Thursday, the 4th
was a warm day, and the members in the afternoon became weary and impatient with
the long strain upon their nerves. Jefferson used to relate with much merriment
that the final vote upon the Declaration was hastened by swarms of flies, which
came from a neighboring stable, and added to the discomfort of the members. A
few days afterward, Jefferson was one of a committee to devise a seal for the
newborn country. Among their suggestions (and this was the only one accepted by
congress) was the best legend ever appropriated, E pluribus unum, a phrase that
had served as a motto on the cover of the “Gentleman’s Magazine”
for many years.

In the fall of 1776, Jefferson resigned his seat in congress on the
grounds that the health of his wife and the condition of his household made his
presence in Virginia indispensable. He had again been elected a member of the
Virginia legislature, and his heart was set upon the work of purging the statute
books of unsuitable laws, and bringing the laws of Virginia up to the level of
the Declaration. For the next three years, Jefferson procured the abolition of
entails, led the fight for the disestablishment of the Church, and as a member
of the Committee on Revisors, recommended far reaching reforms in the legal code
of the state.

In January 1779, the Virginia legislature elected Jefferson governor of
the state, to succeed Patrick Henry, whose third
term ended on June 1. His governorship of two years, during a time of British
invasion, ended unhappily, largely through fault of circumstances. He declined
re-election to a third term, and induced his friends to support General
Thomas Nelson, commander-in-chief of the militia, who was elected.

On September 6, 1782, Jefferson’s wife died. Jefferson had retained a
romantic devotion to her throughout his life, and because of her failing health
refused foreign appointments in 1776 and again in 1781, having promised that he
would accept no public office that would involve their separation. For four
months prior to her death, he was never out of calling, and he was insensible
for several hours after her death. On her death, Martha
left three daughters, the youngest four months old.

Returning to public life to assuage his grief, Jefferson succeeded Benjamin
Franklin as minister to France in 1785. His sympathy for the French
Revolution led him into conflict with Alexander
Hamilton when Jefferson was Secretary of State in President Washington's
Cabinet. He retired from that office after three years. As a reluctant candidate
for President in 1796, Jefferson came within three votes of election. Through a
flaw in the Constitution, he became Vice
President, although an opponent of just elected President
Adams.

In 1800 Jefferson ran for president, won and served two distinguished
terms. Jefferson’s career during his presidency is so integral a part of the
history of the country, that it cannot be described here. The freedom of the
individual human being was ever his main concern, and it was his faith in men
that made him a prophet of progress. In his old age, he fathered the University
of Virginia, and he valued public enlightenment next after private freedom.

Jefferson retained his health nearly to his last days, and had the
happiness of living to the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration
of Independence. He died at twenty minutes to one p.m. on July 4, 1826.

Letter
signed"Th: Jefferson," as Secretary of State, to
New York Governor George Clinton, relating to copies of the first census of
the United States, an act to establish a uniform rule of naturalization and an
act making appropriations for the support of Government for the year 1790 –
three pivotal laws at the very foundation of our government.A
powerful historical letter transmitting new Federal Laws which the Great State
of New York must now abide by.George
Washington had been elected president only a year, and the first act of the
congress of the U.S. was passed on June 1, 1789, setting oaths of office for
Federal officials on March 31, 1790.

Autograph
letter signed ("Th: Jefferson") to Jeremiah Van
Rensselaer, Philadelphia, and 10 July 1791. I page 4to, integral address leaf
with Jefferson's free frank: "Th: Jefferson' and small"Free"
stamp. The Secretary of State aids "an injured and friendless"
Frenchman with a land claim.

Jefferson
writes to a former New York Congressman in Albany regarding

"a
claim to some lands in the Oneida country given by the Indians to one Le
Tonnelier. & by him sold to a Mr. Osruont. This latter gentleman is
arrived from France & has fixed himself what chance there is, & what
should be his proceedings to recover the lands, and having been very
particularly recommended to me from France, I am anxious to aid hisenquiries.
The circumstance of Le Tonnelier's having married in Albany & the
relations between that place & the Oneida country have induced me to
suppose it a good place to make the necessary enquiries. Not having the
advantage of any particular acquaintance at Albany; I have presumed on behalf
of Mr. Osmont to address myself to you, relying for my excuse on the motives
which lead to this liberty; and on your own goodness which will find in
aninjured & friendless stranger a proper object for its exercise. If
therefore you can either at Albany or by the means of any acquaintance on may
have within reach of the (ands. obtain information of the realm of Le
Tonnelier's rights and the means of availing Osmont of them, the communication
of it will be esteemed a very singular favor"

Jeremiah
Van Rensselaer (1738-1811) was born in New York. and raised at the manor house
"Rensselaersvcvck." He was a descendent ofKiliaen van Rensselear,
Dutch merchant, director of the West India Company and the first patroon of
the Manor of Rensselaer. Jeremiah served in the First Congress (1789—1791)
became President of the Bank of Albany in 1798 and a Democratic elector in
1800, casting his vote for Jefferson and Burr. He served as Governor of New
York 1801—1804 and died in Albany in 1810

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JEFFERSON, Thomas, third
president of the United States, born in Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia, 2
April, 1743; died at Monticello, in the same county, 4 July, 1826. His father
was Peter Jefferson, who, with the aid of thirty slaves, tilled a tobacco and
wheat farm of 1,900 acres; a man physically strong, a good mathematician,
skilled in surveying, fond of standard literature, and in politics a British
Whig. Like his fathers before him, Peter Jefferson was a justice of the peace, a
vestryman of his parish, and a member of the colonial legislature. The first of
the Virginia Jeffersons, who were of Welsh extraction, was a member of the
Virginia legislature of 1619, noted as the first legislative body ever convened
on the western continent.

Peter married in 1738 Jane, daughter of Isham Randolph, a wealthy and
conspicuous member of the family of that name. Of their ten children, Thomas was
the third, born in a plain, spacious farm-house, traces of which still exist. He
inherited a full measure of his father's bodily strength and stature, both
having been esteemed in their prime the strongest men of their county. He
inherited also his father's inclination to liberal polities, his taste for
literature, and his aptitude for mathematics. Peter Jefferson died in 1757, when
his son Thomas was fourteen years of age. On his death-bed he left an injunction
that the education of his son, already well advanced in a preparatory school,
should be completed at the College of William and Mary, a circumstance which his
son always remembered with gratitude, saying that if he had to choose between
the education and the estate his father left him, he would choose the
education.

His schoolmates reported that at school he was noted for good scholarship,
industry, and shyness. Without leaving his father's land he could shoot turkeys,
deer, foxes, and other game. His father in his last hours had specially charged
his mother not to permit him to neglect the exercise requisite for health and
strength; but the admonition was scarcely necessary, for the youth was a keen
hunter and had been taught by his father to swim his horse over the Rivanna, a
tributary of the James, which flowed by the estate. The Jeffersons were a
musical family; the girls sang the songs of the time, and Thomas, practicing the
violin assiduously from boyhood, became an excellent performer. At seventeen,
when he entered the College of William and Mary, he was tall, raw-boned,
freckled, and sandy-haired, with large feet and hands, thick wrists, and
prominent cheek-bones and chin. His comrades described him as far from handsome,
a fresh, healthy-looking youth, very erect, agile, and strong, with something of
rusticity in his air and demeanor.

The college was not then efficient nor well equipped, but there was one true
educator connected with it, Dr. William Small, of Scotland, professor of
mathematics. Jefferson gratefully remembered him as an ardent student of
science, who possessed a happy talent for communicating knowledge, a man of
agreeable manners and enlightened mind. He goes so far as to say in his
autobiography that his coming under the influence of Dr. Small "probably
fixed the destinies of my life." The learned and genial professor
became attached to his receptive pupil, made him the daily companion of his
walks, and gave him those views of the connection of the sciences and of the
system of things of which man is a part which then prevailed in the advanced
scientific circles of Europe. Professor Small was a friend of the poet Erasmus
Darwin, progenitor of an illustrious line of learned men.

Jefferson was a hard student in college, and at times forgot his father's
dying injunction as to exercise. He kept horses at Williamsburg, but as his love
of knowledge increased his rides became shorter and less frequent, and even his
beloved violin was neglected. There was a time, as he remembered, when he
studied fifteen hours a day. Once a week the lieutenant-governor, Francis
Fauquier, had a musical party at the "palace," to which the
guests, in the good old style of that century, brought their instruments.
Jefferson was always present at these parties with his violin, and participated
in the concert, the governor himself being also a performer. From Fauquier, a
man of the world of the period, he learned much of the social, political, and
parliamentary life of the Old World. George Wythe, afterward chancellor, was
then a young lawyer of Williamsburg. He was one of the highly gifted men that
frequented the governor's table, and contributed essentially to the forming of
Jefferson's mind.

On his graduation, Jefferson entered upon the study of law, under the
guidance of George Wythe. As his father's estate
was charged with the maintenance of a large family, a profession was necessary
to the student, and he entered upon his preparation for the bar with all his
energy and resolution. On coming of age, in April, 1764, he assumed the
management of the estate, and was appointed to two of his father's
offices--justice of the peace and vestryman. He gave much attention to the
cultivation of his lands, and remained always an attentive, zealous, and
improving farmer. He attached importance all his life to the fact that his legal
training was based upon the works of Lord Coke, of whom he said that "a
sounder Whig never wrote, nor one of profounder learning in the orthodox
doctrines of the British constitution, or in what were called British
liberties." It was his settled conviction that the early drill of the
colonial lawyers in "Coke upon Lyttleton" prepared them for the
part they took in resisting the unconstitutional acts of the British government.
Lawyers formed by Coke, he would say, were all good Whigs; but from the time
that Blackstone became the leading text book "the profession began to
slide into Toryism."

His own study of Coke led him to extend his researches into the origins of
British law, and led him also to the rejection of the maxim of Sir Matthew Hale,
that Christianity is parcel of the laws of England. His youthful treatise on
this complex and difficult point shows us at once the minuteness and the extent
of his legal studies. While he was a student of law, he was an eye-witness of
those memorable scenes in the Virginia legislature which followed the passage of
the stamp-act, he was present as a spectator in the house when Patrick
Henry read his five resolutions, written upon a blank leaf torn from a "Coke
upon Lyttleton," enunciating the principle that Englishmen living in
America had all the rights of Englishmen living in England, the chief of which
was, that they could only be taxed by their own representatives. When he was an
old man, seated at his table at Monticello, he loved to speak of that great day,
and to describe the thrill and ecstasy of the moment when the wonderful orator,
interrupted by cries of "Treason," uttered the well-known words
of defiance: "If this be treason, make the most of it!"

Early in 1767, about his twenty-fourth birthday, Jefferson was admitted to
the bar of Virginia, and entered at once upon the practice of his profession.
Connected through his father with the yeomen of the western counties, and
through his mother with the wealthier planters of the eastern, he had not long
to wait for business. His first account-book, which still exists, shows that in
the first year of his practice he was employed in sixty-eight cases before the
general court of the province, besides county and office business. He was an
accurate, painstaking, and laborious practitioner, and his business increased
until he was employed in nearly five hundred cases in a single year, which
yielded an average profit of about one pound sterling each. He was not a fluent
nor a forcible speaker, and his voice soon became husky as he proceeded; but
James Madison, who heard him try a cause, reports that he acquitted himself
well, and spoke fluently enough for his purpose. He loved the erudition of the
law, and attached great importance to the laws of a country as the best source
of its history. It was he who suggested and promoted the collection of Virginia
laws known as "Henning's Statutes at Large," to which he
contributed the most rare and valuable part of the contents. He practiced law
for nearly eight years, until the Revolutionary contest summoned him to other
labors.

His public life began 11 May, 1769, when he took his seat as a member of the
Virginia house of burgesses, Washington being also a member. Jefferson was then
twenty-six years old. On becoming a public man he made a resolution "never
to engage, while in public office, in any kind of enterprise for the improvement
of my fortune, nor to wear any other character than that of a farmer."
At the close of his public career of nearly half a century he could say that he
had kept this resolution, and he often found the benefit of it in being able to
consider public questions free from the bias of self-interest. This session of
the burgesses was short. On the third day were introduced the famous four
resolutions, to the effect that the colonies could not be lawfully taxed by a
body in which they were not represented, and that they might concur, co-operate,
and practically unite in seeking a redress of grievances. On the fifth day of
the session the royal governor, Lord Botetourt, dissolved the house; but the
members speedily reassembled in the great room of the Raleigh tavern, where
similar resolutions, with others more pointed, were passed. The decency and
firmness of these proceedings had their effect. Before many months had passed
the governor summoned the assembly and greeted them with the news that
parliament had abandoned the system of taxing the colonies--a delusive
statement, which he, however, fully believed himself authorized to make. Amid
the joy--too brief--of this supposed change of policy, Jefferson made his first
important speech in the house, in which he advocated the repeal of the law that
obliged a master who wished to free his slaves to send them out of the colony.
The motion was promptly rejected, and the mover, Mr. Bland, was denounced as an
enemy to his country.

On 1 January, 1772, Jefferson married Mrs. Martha
Wayles Skelton, a beautiful and childless young widow, daughter of John
Wayles, a lawyer in large practice at the Williamsburg bar. His new house at
Monticello, a view of which is, given on page 419, was then just habit, able,
and he took his wife home to it a few days after the ceremony. Next year the
death of his wife's father brought them a great increase of fortune--40,000
acres of land and 135 slaves, which, when the encumbrances were discharged,
doubled Jefferson's estate. He was now a fortunate man indeed: opulent in his
circumstances, happily married, and soon a father.

We see him busied in the most pleasing kinds of agriculture, laying out
gardens, introducing new products, arranging his farms, completing and
furnishing his house, and making every effort to convert his little mountain,
covered with primeval forest, into an agreeable and accessible park. After many
experiments he domesticated almost every tree and shrub, native and foreign,
that could survive the Virginia winter. The contest with the king was soon
renewed, and the decisive year, 1774, opened. It found Thomas Jefferson a
thriving and busy young lawyer and farmer, not known beyond Virginia; but when
it, closed he was a person of note among the patriots of America, and was
proscribed in England. It was he who prepared the "Draught of
Instructions" for Virginia's Declaration to the Congress which met at
Philadelphia in September. That congress, he thought, should unite in a solemn
address to the king; but they should speak to him in a frank and manly way,
informing him, as the chief magistrate of an empire governed by many
legislatures, that one of those legislatures--namely, the British
parliament--had encroached upon the rights of thirteen others. They were also to
say to the king that he was no more than the chief officer of the people,
appointed by the laws and circumscribed with definite powers. He also spoke, in
this very radical draught, of "the late deposition of his Majesty, King
Charles, by the Commonwealth of England" as a thing obviously right. He
maintained that the parliament of Virginia had as much right to pass laws for
the government of the people of England as the British legislature had to pass
laws for the government of the people of Virginia. "Can any one reason
be assigned," he asked, "why a hundred and sixty thousand
electors in the island of Great Britain should give law to four millions in the
states of America?" The draught, indeed, was so radical on every point
that it seemed to the ruling British mind of that day mere insolent burlesque.
It was written, however, by Jefferson in the most modest and earnest spirit,
showing that, at the age of thirty-one, his radical opinions were fully formed,
an elicit expression was wholly unqualified by a knowledge of the world beyond
the sea. This draught, though not accepted by the convention, was published in a
pamphlet, copies of which were sent to England, where Edmund Burke caused it to
be republished with emendations and additions of his own. It procured for the
author, to use his own language, "the honor of having his name inserted
in a long list of proscriptions enrolled in a bill of attainder." The
whole truth of the controversy was given in this pamphlet, without any politic
reserves.

In March, 1775, Jefferson, who had been kept at Monticello for some time by
illness, was in Richmond as a member of the convention which assembled in the
parish church of St. John to consider what course Virginia should take in the
crisis. It was as a member of this body that Patrick Henry, to an audience of
150 persons, spoke the prophetic words in solemn tones as the key to the enigma:
"We must fight! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to
our ears the clash of resounding arms." These sentences, spoken
twenty-seven days before the affair of Lexington, convinced the convention, and
it was agreed that Virginia should arm. A committee of thirteen was appointed to
arrange a plan, among the members of which were Patrick Henry, George
Washington, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin
Harrison, the speaker, Edmund Pendleton, and Thomas Jefferson. The plan they
agreed upon was this: The populous counties to raise and drill infantry
companies; the other counties horsemen, and both to wear the hunting-shirt,
which Colonel Washington told them was the
best field-uniform he knew of. The last act of this convention was to appoint
that, in case a vacancy should occur in the delegation of Virginia to congress,
Thomas Jefferson should supply the place. A vacancy occurred, and on 20 June,
177;5, the day on which Washington received
his commission as commander-in-chief, Jefferson reached Philadelphia, and took
his seat the next morning in congress. Before the sun set that day congress
received news of the stirring battle of Bunker
Hill.

Jefferson was an earnest, diligent, and useful member of the congress. John
Adams, his fellow-member, describes him as "so prompt, frank,
explicit, and decisive upon committees and in conversation that he soon seized
upon my heart." His readiness in composition, his profound knowledge of
British law, and his innate love of freedom and justice, gave him solid standing
in the body. On his return to Virginia he was re-elected by a majority that
placed him third in the list; of seven members. After ten days' vacation at
home, where he then had a house undergoing enlargement, and a household of
thirty-four whites and eighty-three blacks, with farms in three counties to
superintend, he returned to congress to take his part in the events that led to
the complete and formal separation of the colonies from the
mother-country.

In May, 1776, the news reached congress that the Virginia convention were
unanimous for independence, and on 7 June Richard Henry Lee obeyed the
instructions of the Virginia legislature by moving that independence should be
declared. On 10 June a committee of five was appointed to prepare a draught of
the Declaration -- Thomas Jefferson, John
Adams, Benjamin
Franklin, Robert
R. Livingston, and Roger
Sherman. Mr. Jefferson, being the chairman of the committee, was
naturally asked to write the document, he then lived near what is now the corner
of Market and Seventh streets. The paper was written in a room of the second
floor, upon a little writing-desk three inches high, of his own contriving,
which still exists. Congress subjected his draught to a severe and prolonged
revision, making many suppressions, additions, and alterations, most of which
were improvements. One passage was suppressed in which he gave expression to the
wounded feelings of the American people in being so unworthily treated by
brethren and fellow-citizens the document was debated in congress on 2, 3, and 4
July.

Thursday, the 4th, was a warm day, and the members in the afternoon became
weary and impatient with the long strain upon their nerves. Jefferson used to
relate with much merriment that the final vote upon the Declaration
was hastened by swarms of flies, which came from a neighboring state, and added
to the discomfort of the members. A few clays afterward he was one of a
committee to devise a seal for the new-born power. Among their suggestions (and
this was the only one accepted by congress) was the best legend "ever
appropriated, E pluribus unum" , a phrase that had served as a motto on
the cover of the "Gentleman's Magazine" for many years. It was
originally borrowed from a humorous poem of Virgil's.

Having thus linked his name imperishably with the birthday of the nation,
Jefferson resigned his seat in congress, on the ground that the health of his
wife and the condition of his household made his presence in Virginia
indispensable, he had also been again elected a member of the Virginia
legislature, and his heart was set upon the work of purging the statute-books of
unsuitable laws, and bringing up Virginia to the level of the Declaration.
He had formed a high conception of the excellence of the New England
governments, and wished to introduce into his native state the local
institutions that had enabled those states to act with such efficiency during
the war. After some stay at home he entered upon this work at Williamsburg,
where, 8 October, 1776, a messenger from congress informed him that he had been
elected joint commissioner, with Franklin and Deane, to represent the United
States at Paris. After three days of consideration, he resisted the temptation
to go abroad, feeling that his obligations to his family and his state made it
his duty to remain at home.

In reorganizing Virginia, Jefferson and his friends struck first at the
system of entail, which, after three weeks' earnest debate, was totally
destroyed, so that all property in Virginia was held in fee simple and could be
sold for debt. He next attempted, by a short and simple enactment, to abolish
the connection between church and state. He was able to accomplish but a small
portion of this reform at that session, but the work was begun, and nine years
later the law drawn by Jefferson, entitled "An Act for establishing
Religious Freedom," completed the severance. This triumph of equal
rights over ancient prejudices and restriction Jefferson always regarded as one
of his most important contributions to the happiness of his country. Some of his
utterances on this subject have passed into familiar proverbs "Government
has nothing to do with opinion,""Compulsion makes hypocrites,
not converts,""It is error alone which needs the support of
government; truth can stand by itself."

It was he who drew the bill for establishing courts of law in the state, and
for prescribing their powers and methods. It was he also who caused the
removal of the capital to Richmond. He carried the bill extirpating the
principle of primogeniture. It was the committee of which he was chairman that
abolished the cruel penalties of the ancient code, and he made a most earnest
attempt to establish a system of public education in the state. During two years
he and his colleagues, Hamilton, Wythe,
Mason, and Francis
Lightfoot Lee, toiled at the reconstruction of Virginia law, during which
they accomplished all that was then possible, besides proposing many measures
that were passed at a later day. He could write to Dr.
Franklin in 1777 theft the people of Virginia had "laid aside the
monarchical and taken up the republican government with as much ease as would
have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes.
"

It was Jefferson and his friends who wrought this salutary change, and they
were able to effect it because, during the first three years of the war,
Virginia was almost exempt from disturbance. In the spring of 1779, when Burgoyne's
army, as prisoners of war, were en-camped near Monticello, Jefferson was
assiduous in friendly attentions both to the British and the Hessians, throwing
open his house and grounds to them, and arranging many agreeable concerts for
their entertainment. A British captain, himself a good violinist, who played
duets with Jefferson at this time, told the late General John A. Dix, of New
York, that Thomas Jefferson was the best amateur he had ever heard.

In January, 1779, the Virginia, legislature elected Jefferson governor of the
state, to succeed Patrick Henry, whose third
term ended on 1 June. The two years of his governorship proved to be the
severest trial of his life. With slender and fast diminishing resources, he had
to keep up the Virginia regiments in the army of Washington,
and at the same time to send all possible supplies to the support of Gen.
Gates in his southern campaign The western Indians were a source of constant
solicitude, and they were held in check by that brave and energetic neighbor of
Governor Jefferson, George Rogers Clarke. The British and Hessian prisoners also
had to be supplied and guarded. In the midst of his first anxieties he began the
reorganization that he had long desired of the College of William and Mary.
Soon, however, his attention was wholly absorbed by the events of the war. On 16
August, 1780, occurred the disastrous defeat of Gates
at Camden, which destroyed in a day all that Jefferson had toiled to accumulate
in warlike material during eight agonizing weeks.

On the last day of 1780, Arnold's fleet of
twenty-seven sail anchored in Chesapeake bay, and Arnold,
with nine hundred men, penetrated as far as Richmond; but Jefferson had acted
with so much promptitude, and was so ably seconded by the county militia, that
the traitor held Richmond but twenty-three hours, and escaped total destruction
only through a timely change in the wind, which bore him down the river with
extraordinary swiftness. In five days from the first summons twenty-five hundred
militia were in pursuit of Arnold, and hundreds more were coming in every hour.
For eighty-four hours Governor Jefferson was almost continuously in the saddle;
and for many months after Arnold's first
repulse, not only the governor, but all that Virginia had left of manhood,
resources, and credit, were absorbed in the contest. Four times in the spring of
1781 the legislature of Virginia was obliged to adjourn and fly before the
approach or the threat of an enemy. Monticello was captured by a troop of horse,
and Jefferson himself narrowly escaped. Cornwallis
lived for ten days in the governor's house at Elk Hill, a hundred miles down the
James, where he destroyed all the growing crops, burned the barns, carried off
the horses, killed the colts, and took away twenty-seven slaves. During the
public disasters of that time there was the usual disposition among a portion of
the people to cast the blame upon the administration, and Jefferson himself was
of the opinion that, in such a desperate crisis, it was best that the civil and
the military power should be entrusted to the same hand. He therefore declined a
re-election to a third term, and induced his friends to support General Thomas
Nelson, commander-in-chief of the militia, who was elected. The capture of Cornwallis
in November, 1781, atoned for all the previous suffering and disaster. A month
later Jefferson rose in his place in the legislature and declared his readiness
to answer any charges that might be brought against his administration of the
government; but no one responded. After a pause, a member offered a resolution
thanking him for his impartial, upright, and attentive discharge of his duty,
which was passed without a dissenting voice.

On 6 September, 1782, Jefferson's wife died, to his unspeakable and lasting
sorrow, leaving three daughters, the youngest four months old. During the stupor
caused by this event he was elected by a unanimous vote of congress, and, as Madison
reports, "without a single adverse remark," plenipotentiary to
France, to treat for peace, he gladly accepted; but, before he sailed, the
joyful news came that preliminaries of peace had been agreed to, and he returned
to Monticello. In June, 1783, he was elected to congress, and in November took
his seat at Annapolis. Here, as chairman of a committee on the currency, he
assisted to give us the decimal currency now in use. The happy idea originated
with Gouverneur Morris of New York, but with
details too cumbrous for common use. Jefferson proposed our present system of
dollars and cents, with dimes, half-dimes, and a great gold coin of ten dollars,
with subdivisions, such as we have now. Jefferson strongly desired also to apply
the decimal system to all measures. When he traveled he carried with him all
odometer, which divided the miles into hundredths, which he called cents. "I
find," said he, " that every one comprehends a distance readily
when stated to him in miles and cents: so he would in feet and cents, pounds and
cents."

On 7 May, 1784, congress elected Jefferson for a third time plenipotentiary
to France, to join Franklin and Adams
in negotiating commercial treaties with foreign powers. On 5 July he sailed from
Boston upon this mission, and thirty-two days later took up his abode in Paris.
On 2 May, 1785, he received from Mr. Jay his
commission appointing him sole minister plenipotentiary to the king of France
for three years from 10 March, 1785. "You replace Dr. Franklin,"
said the Count de Vergennes to him, when he announced his appointment. Jefferson
replied: " I succeed; no one can replace him." The impression
that France made upon Jefferson's mind was painful in the extreme. While
enjoying the treasures of art that Paris presented, and particularly its music,
fond of the people, too. relishing their amiable manners, their habits and
tastes, he was nevertheless appalled at the cruel oppression of the ancient
system of government. "The people," said he, "are
ground to powder by the vices of the form of government," and he wrote
to Madison that government by hereditary rulers
was a "government of wolves over sheep, or kites over pigeons."

Beaumarchais's "Marriage of Figaro " was in its first run
when Jefferson settled in Paris, and the universal topic of conversation was the
defects of the established regime. Upon the whole, he enjoyed and assiduously
improved his five years' residence in Europe. His official labors were arduous
and constant. He strove, though in vain, to procure the release of American
captives in Algiers without paying the enormous ransom demanded by the day. With
little more success, he endeavored to break into the French protective system,
which kept from the kingdom the cheap food that America could supply, and for
want of which the people were perishing and the monarchy was in peril. He kept
the American colleges advised of the new inventions, discoveries, and books of
Europe. He was particularly zealous in sending home seeds, roots, and nuts or
trial in American soil. During his journey to Italy he procured a quantity of
the choicest rice for the planters of South Carolina, and he supplied Buffon
with American skins, skeletons, horns, and similar objects for his collection.
In Paris he published his "Notes on Virginia," both in French
and English, a work full of information concerning its main subject, and at the
same time surcharged with the republican sentiment then so grateful to the
people of France.

In 1786, when at length the Virginia legislature passed his "Act for
Freedom of Religion," he had copies of it printed for distribution, and
it was received with rapture by the advanced Liberals. It was his custom while traveling
in France to enter the houses of the peasants and converse with them upon their
affairs and condition. He would contrive to sit upon the bed in order to
ascertain what it was made of, and get a look into the boiling pot, to see what
was to be the family dinner. He strongly advised Lafayette to do the same,
saying: "You must ferret the people out of their hovels as I have done,
look into their kettles, eat their bread, loll on their beds, on pretence of
resting yourself, but in fact to find if they are soft." His letters
are full of this subject. He returns again and again to the frightful
inequalities of condition, the vulgarity and incapacity of the hereditary
rulers, and the hopeless destiny of nineteen twentieths of the people. His
compassion for the people of France was the more intense from his strong
appreciation of their excellent qualities. Having received a leave of absence
for six months, he returned with his daughters to Virginia, landing at Norfolk,
18 November, 1789.

His reception was most cordial. The legislature appointed a committee of
thirteen, with Patrick Henry at their head, to
congratulate him on his return, and on the day of his landing he read in a
newspaper that President Washington, in
settling the new government, had assigned to Thomas Jefferson the office of
secretary of state. "I made light of it," he wrote soon
afterward, "supposing I had only to say no, and there would be an end of
it." On receiving the official notification of his appointment, he told
the president that he preferred to retain the office he held. "But,"
he added, "it is not for an individual to choose his post. You are to
marshal us as may be best for the public good." He finally accepted the
appointment, and after witnessing at Monticello, 23 February, 1790, the marriage
of his eldest daughter, Martha, to Thomas Mann Randolph, he began his journey to
New York. During his absence in France, his youngest daughter, Lucy, had died,
leaving him Martha and Maria. On Sunday, 21 March, 1790, he reached New York, to
enter upon the duties of his new office. He hired a house at No. 57 Maiden lane,
the city then containing a population of 35,000. His colleagues in the cabinet
were Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the
treasury; Henry Knox, secretary of war; and Edmund
Randolph, attorney-general. Jefferson's salary was $3,500, and that of the
other members of the cabinet $3,000, a compensation that proved painfully
inadequate.

He soon found himself ill at ease in his place. He had left Paris when the
fall of the Bastile was a recent event, and when the revolutionary movement
still promised to hopeful spirits the greatest good to France and to Europe. He
had been consulted at every stage of its progress by Lafayette and the other
Republican leaders, with whom he was in the deepest sympathy. He left his native
land a Whig of the Revolution; he returned to it a Republican-Democrat. In his
reply to the congratulations of his old constituents, he had spoken of the "sufficiency
of human reason for the care of human affairs." He declared "the
will of the majority to be the natural law of every society, and the only sure
guardian of the rights of man." He added these important words, which
contain the most material article of his political creed:

"Perhaps even this may sometimes err; but its errors are honest,
solitary, and short-lived. Let us, then, forever bow down to the general
reason of society. We are safe with that, even in its deviations, for it soon
returns again to the right way."

To other addresses of welcome he replied in a similar tone. He brought to New
York a settled conviction that the republican is the only form of government
that is not robbery and violence organized. Feeling thus, he was grieved and
astonished to find a distrust of republican government prevalent, in society,
and to hear a preference for the monarchical form frequently expressed. In the
cabinet itself, where Hamilton dominated and
Knox echoed his opinions, the republic was accepted
rather as a temporary expedient than as a final good. Jefferson and Hamilton,
representing diverse and incompatible tendencies, soon found themselves in
ill-accord, and their discussions in the cabinet became vehement. They differed
in some degree upon almost every measure of the administration, and on several
of the most vital their differences became passionate and distressing.

In May, 1791, by openly accepting and eulogizing Thomas
Paine's" Rights of Man," a spirited reply to Burke's "Reflections
on the Revolution in France," Jefferson placed himself at the head of
the Republican party in the United States. The difference between the two chief
members of the cabinet rapidly developed into a personal antipathy, and both of
them ardently desired to withdraw. Both, however, could have borne these
disagreeable dissensions, and we see in their later letters that the real cause
of their longing to resign was the insufficiency of their salaries. Jefferson's
estate, much diminished by the war, was of little profit to him in the absence
of the master's eye. General Washington, who
did equal justice to the merits of both these able men, used all his influence
and tact to induce them to remain, and, yielding to the president's persuasions,
both made an honest attempt at external agreement. But in truth their feelings,
as well as their opinions, were naturally irreconcilable. Their attitude toward
the French revolution proves this. Hamilton continually and openly expressed an
undiscriminating abhorrence of it, while Jefferson deliberately wrote that if
the movement "had desolated half the earth," the evil would
have been less than the continuance of the ancient system. Writing to an old
friend he went farther even than this: "Were there but an Adam and an
Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it, now
is." On every point of difficulty created by the French revolution the
disagreement between the two secretaries was extreme.

On other subjects there was little real concord, and it was a happy moment
for both when, on 1 January, 1794, President Washington
accepted Jefferson's resignation. He left office at a fortunate time for his
reputation, since his correspondence with the English plenipotentiary, George
Hammond, and the French plenipotentiary, Edmond Genet, had just been published
in a large pamphlet. Jefferson's letters to those gentlemen were so moderate, so
just, and so conciliatory as to extort the approval of his opponents.
Chief-Justice Marshall, an extreme Federalist, remarks, in his "Life of Washington,"
that this correspondence lessened the hostility of Jefferson's opponents without
diminishing the attachment of his friends. Five days after his release from
office he set out for home, having been secretary of state three years and ten
months.

All his interest in the cultivation of the soil now returned to him, and he
supposed his public life ended forever. In September, 1794, after the retirement
of Hamilton from the cabinet, Washington
invited Jefferson to resume the office of secretary of state; but he declined,
declaring that "no circumstances would evermore tempt him to engage in
anything public." Nevertheless, in 1796, Washington
having refused to serve a third term in the presidency, he allowed his name to
be used as that of a candidate for the succession. The contest was embittered by
the unpopularity of the Jay treaty with Great Britain. Jefferson had desired the
rejection of the treaty, and he remained always of the opinion that by its
rejection the government of the United States might at length have secured "a
respect for our neutral rights" without a war. Jefferson had a narrow
escape from being elected to the presidency in 1796. John Adams
received seventy-one electoral votes, and Jefferson sixty-eight, a result that,
as the law then stood, gave him the vice presidency.

In view of the duties about to devolve upon him, he began to prepare, chiefly
for his own guidance in the chair of the senate, his " Manual of
Parliamentary Practice," a code that still substantially governs all
our deliberative bodies. He deeply felt the importance of such rules, believing
that when strictly enforced they Operated as a check on the majority, and gave "shelter
and protection to the minority against the attempts of power."
Jefferson much enjoyed the office of vice president, partly from the interest he
took in the art of legislation and partly because his presidency of the
Philosophical society brought him into agreeable relations with the most able
minds of the country. He took no part whatever in the administration of the
government, as Mr. Adams ceased to consult him on
political measures almost immediately after his inauguration. The administration
of Adams, so turbulent and eventful, inflamed party
spirit to an extreme degree. The reactionary policy of Hamilton
and his friends had full scope, as is shown by the passage of the alien and
sedition laws, and by the warlike preparations against France. During the first
three years Jefferson endeavored in various ways to influence the public mind,
and thus to neutralize in some degree the active and aggressive spirit of Hamilton.
He was clearly of opinion that the alien and sedition laws were not merely
unconstitutional, but were so subversive of fundamental human rights as to
justify a nullification of them.

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